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The Download crowd was diverse with people of all ages including quite a few brave families, in an environment where piercings and tattoos are virtually required – you are guaranteed many a bizarre sight.
As well as Friday’s zombie theme, Oompa Loompas, dinosaurs, Mr Potato Head, superheroes and an amazing Stay Puft Marshmallow Man were spotted trekking through the festival grounds.
In spite of the downpours, Download delivered a fabulous weekend of music with a great atmosphere. Here are a few of Purple Revolver’s musical highlights.
System Of A Down
Saturday night saw one of the most anticipated bands of the weekend take to the stage. Opening with Prison Song, they were on top form. Serj’s soaring vocals had the crowd going crazy with constant bouncing and intense circle pits whilst Chop Suey and Toxicity had the entire audience singing along. Their only fault was that they didn’t interact with the crowd much although they made up for this with the sheer quality of their performance.
The Darkness
From the opening moments of Black Shuck, it was obvious that they are back with a bang. Looking like he had just stepped from the set of The Three Musketeers, Justin Hawkins and the band powered through the majority of their debut album Permission To Land along with a couple of tracks from One Way Ticket To Hell.
Skindred
One of the bands that made a strong play to steal the weekend. They kicked things off with an acoustic set on the Jager stage on Friday evening. Benji proved that even acoustically he can still work the crowd with possibly the first ever acoustic wall of death. Sporting a shiny union jack dinner jacket and top hat, Benji took things up a level for the full band set on Saturday afternoon over on the Main Stage. The flamboyant frontman joked with the crowd and managed to get everyone to join him in a mass ‘Skindred Robot’ and later on during Warning he managed to get a huge majority of the crowd to participate in the ‘Newport Helicopter’. This is the moment when he asks everyone to remove a garment and swing it above their heads, it was quite a sight to behold.
Black Stone Cherry
Their southern style rock and catchy riffs teamed with Chris Robertson’s impressively raspy vocals made for a strident set. The guys very clearly enjoyed playing and even threw in a cover of Adele’s Rolling In The Deep which went down an absolute storm.
The Gaslight Anthem
Sunday’s rain was damn heavy by the time they took to the stage. As Download first-timers they had managed to secure a relatively decent line-up slot. They kicked off their set with American Slang and soon had the soggy crowd bouncing along. They wrapped things up with a fab cover of U2’s I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.
Obsessive Compulsive
Of course Download was much more than the big names and we found a few less known bands that really stood out along our travels. A decent sized crowd gathered to see this Manchester based band play their first acoustic gig on the Jagermeister stage on Friday afternoon. Front-woman Kelii has strong vocals that were haunting in places, imagine a Distillers-Hole hybrid.
Fighting Wolves
The newly formed London band made their Download debut with an opening slot on the Redbull stage on Saturday morning. They kicked off their set with the fantastically infectious Bleed You and proceeded to squeeze four more fast paced tracks into their short 20 minute set. Definitely ones to watch.
Dripback
Another band new to the Download scene, delivering some thrashy-screamo to the Redbull stage late Saturday morning. Their unrelenting, hard-hitting beats were received well and their animalistic front-man was full of gusto as the band zealously played out their set.
Floods
As one of the winners of the Redbull Bedroom Jam competition Floods played out their set early Sunday afternoon. Joe’s clean vocals juxtaposed with James’ screams worked really well. James is a fantastic front-man. It took him no time at all to leap over the barrier and into the crowd. Even when he was stage side he was bounding along the length of the photo pit. His wild energy alongside the fast paced beats and catchy riffs made for an incredibly entertaining performance. Watch out for this band, we like them a lot.
Frank Turner
Topping things off for us, Frank made his Download debut as a solo artist headlining the Pepsi Max stage on Sunday evening. He delivered an hour long set with wall to wall hits and even threw in a cover of Iron Maiden’s The Number Of The Beast. The atmosphere was electric and it was a marvellous way to round off the festival.
Photos by Danni Pugh